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Protest at Tasmanian Mineral conference

ELEANOR HALL: Back home now and Tasmania's mining industry has enraged environmentalists with a new pitch to create more mines in the Tarkine region.

The state's peak mining group says it has commissioned research which shows that mining already generates more than a billion dollars for the state.

But the head of the Tasmanian Minerals Council says environmentalists are scaring off future investors, as Felicity Ogilvie reports from Hobart.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The report commissioned by Tasmania's Minerals Council shows that five major companies are responsible for generating more than $2.5 billion for the state's economy and that's big money for a small state.

Economic consultant Bruce Felmingham is the report's author

BRUCE FELMINGHAM: If you took the estimates of Minerals Resources Tasmania, you'd have $2.393 billion. That's the second largest behind health and human services and other things.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The five major companies are involved in mining, mineral processing and manufacturing.

BRUCE FELMINGHAM: And obviously this one is important, mineral processing and mining.

FELICITY OGILVIE: But the mining industry is increasingly facing the sort of environmental opposition once reserved for the forestry industry.

Scott Jordan from the group Save the Tarkine is behind a protest outside today's mining conference in Hobart.

SCOTT JORDAN: Clearly projects like the Venture Minerals project to go in at Mount Lindsay where we're talking about a mine a kilometre and a half long, 220 metres deep in the Tarkine rainforest, is clearly unacceptable.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Tasmania's Deputy Premier, Bryan Green, is playing down the dispute and says it won't be anything like the decades long forest wars.

BRYAN GREEN: Well, I think that the whole debate is different. I mean we're having, as you know and we'll be participating in this, a rally in support of the mining industry on the 25th at Tullah.

WAYNE BOULD: I sincerely hope he's right. However the behaviour of some of the deep ecology environmental groups would potentially belie that.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Wayne Bould is the president of the Tasmanian Minerals Council.

He's also the chief operating officer at an open cut iron ore mine in the Tarkine.

The Savage River mine has been operating for almost 50 years, and has been largely spared from environmental protests.

But Wayne Bould warns that any ramping up of protests against new mines may risk sorely-needed investment.

WAYNE BOULD: The problem with mining investment is that it's very much front end. It's big bang at the front end where you've got to buy a lot of gear, you've got to do a lot of work to set it up to make it pay and it pays over a long period of time.

So investors get very shaky when they see that approvals aren't handled in the way they see them handled elsewhere in the world, when they see some of the delay.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Scott Jordan would like to see the dispute settled quickly.

SCOTT JORDAN: We hope that it's not a 30 year fight like we've seen in the forest wars. We hope that common sense prevails long before that but that being said, we're not prepared to watch the Tarkine be safe from forestry only to be turned over to become a series of open cut mines.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Mr Jordan has enlisted a big hitter in his anti mining campaign. Veteran of the anti-forestry wars in Tasmania and former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown is now the patron of Save the Tarkine.